Thursday 22 September 2005/... More than one million people in Europe and North America are now playing the competitive online role-playing game, Guild WarsÂ®, NCsoftÂ® has today announced. Account activations for the chart-topping opus have reached this significant figure in less than five months and the game is showing no signs of slowing.

In celebration of its commercial and critical success, NCsoft Europe has today announced a Guild Wars Special Edition. Containing both physical and digital goodies, this bumper pack will be available on 21st October throughout Europe.

In addition to an exclusive brand-new exquisite 72-page book filled with never-before-seen artwork, a map of the game world, combined manual and story book, and 30 minutes of new music written exclusively for this release, the Guild Wars Special Edition will also include a key that provides the player with a limited number of skill and item unlocks, which can be applied to an existing account or act as a fast-start package for a beginner.

Geoff Heath, CEO, NCsoft Europe says: ""Without a doubt, Guild Wars has been our most successful title in Europe to date. We are delighted to be able to reward European players with this exciting special edition and we look forward to seeing Guild Wars stay in the top five for the foreseeable future. "

Commenting on hitting the one million mark, Robert Garriot, president of NCsoft North America said: "We've reached this lofty goal in an extremely short period of time. With our no-subscription-required model, we believe we've created a quality online product that is hitting a chord with gamers everywhere."

"We are extremely pleased the game has been so well received in such a short amount of time," said ArenaNet co-founder Michael O'Brien. "Our commitment to our players is to consistently provide high-level support for the game through frequent gameplay and content updates and we believe that's a big reason why we have so many people playing the game today."

Earlier this month ArenaNetTM released Sorrow's Furnace, a free update to Guild Wars which offers two new explorable regions, new quests, new monsters, new items and more. Players in Europe and North America are already highly vocal with their praise for the newly released update.

ArenaNet will be announcing plans shortly for launching the next major retail installment of the game and NCsoft will soon be expanding into both Japan and Taiwan with fully-localised versions.

ArenaNetÂ® has created a unique, global game world that invites players from around the world to play together seamlessly. There are no sharded servers, and, as all languages are supported simultaneously in-game, players are free to explore the game with friends from all across the world without any language barriers.